Inadequate Cleaning Leaves Teachers And Students Sick

Inadequate Cleaning Leaves Teachers And Students Sick

A lack of cleaning standards across the education sector is having adverse health and financial effects on schools, studies from the United States have revealed.

This extends far further than the visually unappealing sticky surfaces in classrooms, or the well-used water fountains, or even the bathrooms. Even the school computers could literally be making Kiwi kids more vulnerable to the flu and cold .

Typically it is these high-touch surfaces that become quickly contaminated which, on being frequently touched, spread the flu and other pathogens across the school environment. For this reason alone, those surfaces must be effectively cleaned. But are they?

The annual flu season inevitably brings about more student and staff absences, resulting not only in poor academic performance, but budgetary pressures for schools.

It is as simple as this: If school cleaning is not up to standard, the spread of bacteria and other virus will result in more children (and teachers) being absent from school.

While undeniable that public and private sector illness costs the government billions of dollars annually, schools’ wage bills can also be negatively impacted through the constant need for relief teachers.

According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment there are approximately 30,000 commercial cleaners working in the sector across New Zealand. Currently there is no Cleaning Industry Training Standards (CITS) that provides confidence to the education sector, or for that matter all employers, that the cleaners you have on your school grounds have the necessary skill-sets to provide an adequate level of hygiene and cleaning services.

CrestClean, New Zealand’s largest privately owned commercial cleaning company believes this is wrong and is continuing to advocate for the introduction of Cleaning Industry Training Standards (CITS). They believe this could be an answer to reducing teacher and students’ risk of illness and effectively reduce absenteeism from school.

A school’s cleanliness is often defined by visual inspection. There is increasing evidence to show this is no longer appropriate, and quantitative methods need to be adopted by cleaning companies in order to effectively reduce the spread of cold and flu viruses.

With young children succumbing to approximately 12 colds per year, the common cold is the leading cause of visits to the doctor and absenteeism from school , with about 62,000 students absent from school each week .

Patterns of absence from school can place students at risk of poor achievement and early dropout, significantly reducing a child’s opportunities later on in life .

While somewhat dated, a study in 2006 found that over half of early school leavers said they fell behind in school work because of absences including sickness, and found it difficult to catch up .

A third of New Zealand schools have unclean hand drying in toilet facilities, and only half the boys and three quarters of the girls surveyed washed their hands . If school facilities haven’t been cleaned to a high standard, bacteria can survive on surfaces for months and spread between individuals.

Dirty schools aren’t just affecting the students; teachers have on average 6.7 sick days per year. Employee sick leave costs the government $1.26 billion annually .

This should be a wake-up call for more preventative methods to improve the health and hygiene of New Zealanders.

These issues should be a concern for both the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health. As a result, we believe it is essential for more extensive research to be done in order for New Zealanders to understand the negative effects that a dirty school has on a student’s health.

Something as simple as Cleaning Industry Training Standards (CITS) applied consistently across the commercial cleaning sector could have the potential to reduce annual wage costs, and improve academic performance of students at school.

More fundamental is that Cleaning Industry Training Standards (CITS) will install a degree of confidence in schools knowing that the cleaning is fulfilling a key requirement to assist the prevention of sickness in students and staff.

ENDS

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